This invention relates generally to solid state lighting applications and specifically to high refractive index (HRI) nanocomposites including phosphors suitable for excitation by Light Emitting Diodes (LED's) and photonic lighting devices based thereon.
Because of their energy efficiency, LED's have recently been proposed for lighting applications, particularly for specialty lighting applications, where energy inefficient incandescent and halogen lights are the norm. To date, three main approaches have been taken to provide so called “white” light from LED's. The first approach uses clusters of red, green and blue (RGB) LED's, with color mixing secondary-optics, to produce white light. This approach does provide good quality white light with a “color rendering index” (CRI) of ˜85 and is energy efficient, however, the need to drive three separate sets of LED's requires complex and more expensive driver circuitry. The complexity arises due to considerably different extent of degradation in efficiency with increasing temperature, for each of the red, green and blue LEDs and to different degradation lifetimes between the red, green and blue LEDs. Furthermore, high-brightness (5 mW to 1000 mW LED lamp) blue and green LED's have only recently been developed and are expensive when compared to red LED's.
A second approach to the generation of white light by LED's is the use of a high-brightness blue LED (450 nm to 470 nm) to energize a yellow phosphor, such as Yttrium aluminum garnet doped with cerium (YAlG:Ce called “YAG”). While this approach is energy efficient, low cost and manufacturable, it provides a lower quality white light with color temperature (CT) of ˜7000 K and CRI of ˜70 to 75, which is not acceptable for many high quality applications. The use of a thicker phosphor layer to absorb and down-convert more of the blue emission, can lower the color temperature and thereby improve the quality of white light. However, this results in a lower energy efficiency. Alternately, using a single or multiple phosphors with red emission in addition to yellowish-green (or greenish-yellow) emission can increase the color rendering index and thereby improve the quality of white light yielding a CT of ˜4000 K and CRI of ˜80 to 85 but with lower energy efficiency. However, optical efficiency of the phosphor containing package is only about 50%, resulting in decreased light extraction in each of the above cases.
A third approach to the generation of white light by LED's is the use of a high-brightness UV/violet LED (emitting 370-430 nm radiation) to energize RGB phosphors. This approach provides high quality white light with CRI of ˜90 or higher, is low cost and is reliable to the extent that the encapsulant in the package, containing/surrounding the phosphor and LED chip/die does not degrade in the presence of UV/violet emission. This is due to shorter degradation lifetimes and a larger decrease in efficiency with increasing ambient temperature, for red LED chips compared to UV/violet or blue LED chips, which leads to greater color-maintenance problems and requires more complex driver circuitry. However, at present this approach has very poor efficiency because of the poor light conversion efficiency of the UV/violet excitable RGB phosphors currently in use. In addition, the optical efficiency of the phosphor containing package is only about 50%, resulting in a further decrease in light extraction.
The present invention is directed to a photonic structure for “white” light generation by phosphors under the excitation of a LED. The photonic structure mounts the LED and an optically transparent nanocomposite matrix having dispersed therein phosphors which will emit light under the excitation of the radiation of the LED. The phosphors dispersed in the matrix may be nanocrystalline or larger sized with the addition of non light emitting, non light scattering nanoparticles dispersed within the matrix material so as to raise the index of refraction of the matrix material to that of the phosphors. The nanocomposite matrix material may be readily formed by molding and formed into a variety of shapes including lenses for focusing the emitted light. A large number of the photonic structures may be arranged on a substrate to provide even illumination or other purposes.
The present invention provides:
A High refractive index (>1.7, ˜1.9), optically clear, transfer moldable encapsulating lens                Dimensions larger than ˜0.1 cm are achievable        Encapsulation of InGaN (Blue/violet/green)& AlInGaP (red/yellow) saturated color LED dies.        Encapsulation of white LED lamps containing an InGaN LED die and conventional phosphors        